I have a question about bacteria/germs and hand washing...

[AngeloMysterioso]

Now this may be me being utterly thick, but I’m a bit confused. Consider this scenario...

I go food shopping and whilst in the shop my hands come into contact with some nasty germs.

Those germs then transfer onto the things I touch- shopping items, bags etc.

I get home. I touch the door handle, the bathroom door handle, the tap, soap dispenser etc.

I thoroughly wash my hands. Yay!! Germs begone!

I turn off the tap, exit the bathroom, and go and unload my shopping.

What I don’t get is, surely the bacteria that had gone from my hands onto the taps, door handles, shopping etc before I washed my hands will just go back onto my hands when I touch them again? Thus rendering them no longer clean?

Or is that not how it works?

Also I want no mention of the C word on this thread.

And no calling each other c**ts either

Wash your hands before shopping, take a baby wipe and wipe the trolley. (or wear gloves) Come home wash your hands. Unpack your shopping, wash your hands Clean your house well and frequently with soap and water, You will be fine

Come in
Wash hands
Wipe down handles, taps, doors etc with disinfectant
Wash hands again
Carry on

(you c**t )

I think you should take care to wash hands after each time they come into contact with surfaces that someone else may have come into contact with recently.
So life becomes a spinning session between the sink, the shopping and the door handles after each excursion 🤷‍♀️

Least you cant go out for any other reason apart from work and food

Under normal circumstances I don’t give this a second thought
At the moment I wash most of my shopping with dettol water.

You need clean taps, loo flushers, handles, light switches, kettles, bannisters etc as well.

Assume everything you touch is contaminated. Door handles, baskets, petrol pump, atm kybd.

Dettol does not work.
Antibacterial stuff does not work.
If you are worried about viruses that is.

No, you're right. That will happen. You should wash your hands again after unpacking the shopping.

But honestly thinking along these lines and trying to eliminate every trace of germs is getting towards OCD type thoughts which aren't healthy or helpful to your MH in general.

Wash hands regularly as this will help to reduce the spread. You will not be able to eliminate everything entirely, and that's OK.

I have a related question, which I've always wondered: Do germs "spread" or do they just get moved around by contact?

Let's say I have some germs on my hand from the shopping, or perhaps some raw chicken I've just cut up. I wash my hands but in the meantime unnoticed by me I've touched a spot on the kitchen counter.

Will the germs multiply in this kitchen counter spot, will that "germ spot" get bigger? Or will they just stay there until they die because they have no food source? What about if I'm cutting the chicken and suddenly a child falls and hurts themself badly, and I have to rush them to hospital. By the time I get home, that pile of chicken on the chopping board on the counter - have the germs spread out from the chicken, onto the chopping board, off the chopping board onto the counter - or is it enough when I get home to bin the chicken (or cook it if it's still alright), pick up the chopping board by the un-chickeny edges and wash it, or should I consider the entire chopping board to be contaminated and potentially the counter around the area?

I feel like I should know this but I have no idea

Bacteria can multiply given warmth and moisture - that's why the bacterial load on a surface can rise after cleaning (mopping etc) - but a virus needs a host so it can't replicate outside of a person (or host). It can survive on a surface for a bit and hope to get picked up, that's all.

Ok endofthelinefinally what does work?

Erm. First of all. You take an antibacterial wipe with you ( not a baby wipe!!) and you wipe down the handles of trolleys and baskets thoroughly before picking them up.

When you get back in the car you wipe your hands with a wipe ( antibacterial) and use hand sanitizer until you reach home.

I should add, Whilst you are in the supermarket you avoid touching your face/ mouth/ nose/ phone/ eating etc

Then.... when you get home, you wash hands thoroughly with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. You put shopping away- antibacterial wipe it if you want to and then wash your again. Wipe / disinfect all surfaces handles etc you have touched

Sounds a lot but it is a piece of piece and my family have been doing this shit since day dot.

It's nothin new to us

Washing up liquid and hot water. Wash and dry any surface that is safe, i.e. not light switches. The virus that we musn't name is fatty, so detergent breaks it down.

Ordinary soap and water for hands. There is no advantage to antibacterial soap.
A bleach solution for washing every other hard surface.
Disinfectant/ antibacterial stuff is not effective against viruses.

Antibacterial wipes are useless. It’s a virus, not bacteria. You need things like soap and water, alcohol- based sanitiser, bleach solution in water, washing up liquid in water.

www.journalofhospitalinfection.com/article/S0195-6701(20)30046-3/fulltext

If you’ve touched the trolley and picked up a bit of virus then followed all the washing and stuff, but they there is still a bit on the milk you bought that you missed when you washed everything...

And then this one bit of virus gets transferred into you, do you then have a mild illness or can it still be serious?

Aka do I need to be THAT paranoid?

3 lots of cbt, antidepressants to get me not seeing germs on every surface and fear of contamination......and then this......turns out i was right all along!!!

Dettol spray label says it also kills viruses

Bleach/washing up liquid is better for this virus.

Dettol DOES kill 99.9% of other Corona viruses that are in the family of viruses that COVID-19 belongs to.

It's not like antibiotics that do not kill viruses in the human body.

Most surface wipes contain bleach/chlorine which are contact cleaners. Check the packet for info.

Most wipes are not actually effective in the way one imagines as the dwell time (the time the liquid takes to evaporate) is shorter than the kill time (the time the liquid takes to kill germs). They, like all other cloths, mainly work by mechanical removal.

You can just use detergent and a clean cloth and then toss it in the laundry bucket. That's effective.

Alcohol takes one minute to be effective, so you have to use enough that it doesn't evaporate. According to the journal of Hospital Infection, bleach/washing up liquid solution is best.

Randomly - as I understand it, generally, if you come into contact with a small amount of bacteria/virus/germ, your immune system will be able to fight it off. You probably won't get ill at all. After all we would be in trouble if we keeled over to infection at the slightest hint of contact with germs! But I don't know if this is true for covid-19 considering it is a brand new one that nobody has any immunity to yet. It might be that small amounts aren't enough to infect you, but I don't know enough about how it works.

Oi BertieBotts what did I say about the C word?!?!

Off to the naughty corner with you...